The head of a national Canadian think tank has a sobering message for the commercial real estate sector in Vancouver: the factors that led to an American populist uprising and the Donald Trump presidency are alive and kicking north of the border, and will be ignored at our peril.

Canadians are failing to take action on issues surrounding employment, immigration and urban policy — the same problems that have led to a socioeconomic and ideological split between American urban elites and working-class rural dwellers, said Brian Lee Crowley, the managing director of Ottawa-based Macdonald-Laurier Institute‎.

The North Vancouver native was speaking at a Commercial Real Estate Development Association breakfast at the Fairmont Waterfront Hotel on Feb. 23.